JEDDAH, 2 March 2005 — An article entitled “Camera Used in Corrupt AIDS Cook-Up” by Rashid Al-Zahrani appeared in Okaz Arabic daily on Friday. A translation of the article follows:
“A journalist from an English-language newspaper ran like the wind from the lobby of a hospital in Jeddah which has a quarantined AIDS ward after he was arrested for taking pictures of a patient. When hospital staff and security witnessed this, they made every effort to get the film from the reporter and finally succeeded in doing so. Sources said that the reporter had approached the hospital administration seeking information about AIDS patients but that the administration had refused to talk to him. As he was leaving, he spoke to some members of staff after convincing them that he had ‘permission’ to talk to them and to photograph patients. The staff soon learned that this was not true and that he was making up the story.”
What really happened at King Saud Hospital 10 days ago involved my colleague Roger Harrison, a female trainee and me. As part of an Arab News investigation into conditions there, we were paying an unscheduled visit to the hospital which has an AIDS ward. Arab News had learned that patients were locked in their rooms and were not being given life-prolonging anti-viral medication for as long as it took for them to be deported — sometimes as long as three years.
We initially drove around the hospital to look at the condition it was in. After parking, the three of us walked into the building and made our way unchallenged to the AIDS ward where we found two nurses at their station. Roger gave them his business card. When they saw Arab News written on it, they immediately asked if we had permission to be in the ward. We said we did not, and were promptly escorted to Hospital Director Dr. Sanaa Felimban.
We didn’t want to meet her at this point, because we were in the initial stages of the investigation and we hadn’t prepared the questions we wanted to ask. This was not the formal interview we had planned for later in the investigation. Nonetheless we went to her office where we discussed AIDS statistics and research. We then made another appointment to meet her at a later date and left the hospital.
Two days later, the trainee and I returned to the hospital and again walked unchallenged into the AIDS ward. There were no doctors, nurses or security guards anywhere in sight. We spoke with a patient who was in an unlocked room but who was chained to his bed. He did not ask if we had permission to speak to him. Instead, he proceeded to list his complaints about the hospital which gave rise to new questions that we felt Dr. Felimban needed to answer at a later date. In the room next to his was an emaciated man sleeping in the fetal position. It was a sad and miserable sight and I snapped a picture with my mobile and then placed it in my pocket. No one but the trainee saw me take the picture. The patient’s eyes were blacked out before the photo was submitted to our editors.
On our way out of the hospital, we ran into a doctor who was making his rounds. He asked if we had permission to be in the hospital and we said we did not but that we had an appointment with Dr. Felimban at a later date and that we were at the hospital gathering information in preparation for the interview — all absolutely true.
He said: “It is important that conditions here change. The problem is not the new hospital director. She inherited a problem that only those high up in the Ministry of Health can change. By bringing attention to patient conditions, it might actually help the patients.”
What was revealed as we accompanied him on his rounds is the subject matter of the investigation. Once we got answers to some of our questions based on what the doctor said and what we had seen, we walked out of the ward and drove off.
We were not arrested nor was my “film” taken from me. We did not “run like the wind” when we left the hospital. In fact, we walked out of the hospital in a normal and dignified manner with the photo safe and sound in my mobile.
Arab News spoke with Okaz reporter Rashid Al-Zahrani who revealed that Dr. Felimban had called him and provided him not only with the version of the story that appeared in his article but also with my name. Al-Zahrani used his discretion and decided not to use my name. The medical director resorted to outright lies in an attempt to pre-emptively discredit the investigation. The dilemma facing the administration was that the hospital’s practices were about to be made public.
The article that appeared in Okaz served no purpose but to protect the administration from any repercussions that might come later from above regarding how the information got into the press. It also attempted to discredit our newspaper. By not naming the publication nor the journalist involved, Al-Zahrani’s article was an attempt to pre-emptively discredit any future stories and articles that might appear in the press about the hospital by branding our investigation a “cook-up”.
Al-Zahrani had a journalistic responsibility to contact me, but he failed to do so despite being given my contact information by Dr. Felimban. Instead of immediately taking simple measures to improve the quality of life for patients and weathering the storm that would follow, hospital administrators devoted their time to a cover-up, suspending one doctor for several days and then assigning him to the night shift.
Al-Zahrani, along with reporters of some other local newspapers, is now very interested in the findings of Arab News’ investigation and the cover-up that the hospital administration cooked up. It appears that Okaz’s article has generated a great deal of interest in the local press about conditions at King Saud Hospital.
